What are those specks in front of the Moon? They are silhouettes of the International Space Station (ISS). Using careful planning and split-second timing, a meticulous lunar photographer captured ten images of the ISS passing in front of last month's full moon. But this wasn't just any full moon -- this was the first of the three consecutive 2016 supermoons. A supermoon is a full moon that appears a few percent larger and brighter than most other full moons. The featured image sequence was captured near Dallas, Texas. Occurring today is the second supermoon of this series, a full moon that is the biggest and brightest not only of the year, but of any year since 1948. To see today's super-supermoon yourself, just go outside at night and look up. The third supermoon of this year's series will occur in mid-December.

Does this stunning image of the moon give you chills? That’s how astrophotographer Greg Diesel Walck felt when taking the image.

"I…

Does this stunning image of the moon give you chills? That’s how astrophotographer Greg Diesel Walck felt when taking the image.

"I've taken over 30,000 pictures of the moon. Tonight, I had a chance to get chills again like it was the first time," he wrote. Walck took the image from Moyock, North Carolina as a thunderstorm drifted across the horizon on Aug. 5.

In the image, you can see Jupiter above the moon peeking out of the clouds. The waxing moon appears to hover right below Jupiter. The moon was only three days past new phase when Walck captured the view.

Walck used a Sony A77 400mm lens on tripod with a 2.5 sec shutter at ISO 1600.

What you can’t see may astound you. Beneath the oceans’ churning surface, oceano…

Big Picture Science Radio Show: What Lies Beneath (ENCORE)

What you can’t see may astound you. Beneath the oceans’ churning surface, oceanographers have recently discovered the largest volcano in the world – perhaps in the solar system. Also, the menace of America’s Cascadia fault, which could unleash a devastating, magnitude 9 earthquake.

William McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington …

Could there be life in Pluto's ocean?

William McKinnon, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and a co-author on two of four new Pluto studies published Dec. 1 in Nature, argues that beneath the heart-shaped region on Pluto known as Sputnik Planitia there lies an ocean laden with ammonia.

The presence of the pungent, colorless liquid helps to explain not only Pluto's orientation in space but also the persistence of the massive, ice-capped ocean that other researchers call "slushy"—but McKinnon prefers to depict as syrupy.

Using computer models along with topographical and compositional data culled from the New Horizon spacecraft's July 2015 flyby of Pluto, McKinnon led a study on Sputnik Planitia's churning nitrogen ice surface that appeared this past June in Nature. He is also an author on the recently released study regarding the orientation and gravity of Pluto caused by this subsurface ocean some 600 miles wide and more than 50 miles thick.

"In fact, New Horizons has detected ammonia as a compound on Pluto's big moon, Charon, and on one of Pluto's small moons. So it's almost certainly inside Pluto," McKinnon said. "What I think is down there in the ocean is rather noxious, very cold, salty and very ammonia-rich—almost a syrup.

"It's no place for germs, much less fish or squid, or any life as we know it," he added. "But as with the methane seas on Titan—Saturn's main moon—it raises the question of whether some truly novel life forms could exist in these exotic, cold liquids."

This picture, taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows NGC 4696, the largest galaxy in the Cent…

Dusty filaments in NGC 4696h

This picture, taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), shows NGC 4696, the largest galaxy in the Centaurus Cluster.

The new images taken with Hubble show the dusty filaments surrounding the centre of this huge galaxy in greater detail than ever before. These filaments loop and curl inwards in an intriguing spiral shape, swirling around the supermassive black hole at such a distance that they are dragged into and eventually consumed by the black hole itself.

As the name suggests, some types of grazing encounters between galaxies create shapes that resemble the human eye. While …

An All-Seeing Eye

As the name suggests, some types of grazing encounters between galaxies create shapes that resemble the human eye. While galaxy collisions of this type are not uncommon, only a few galaxies with eye-like, or ocular, structures have been observed. The paucity of these features is likely due to their very ephemeral nature — ocular structures like these tend to only last for several tens of millions of years, which is merely the blink of an eye in a galactic lifetime.

These two galaxies are named IC 2163 (left) and NGC 2207 (right) — IC 2163 displays the ocular structure in this image. The duo lies approximately 114 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Canis Major (The Greater Dog).

The galaxies have brushed past each other — scraping the outer edges of their spiral arms —with IC 2163 passing behind NGC 2207. This glancing collision triggered a tsunami of stars and gas in IC 2163, with material in the outer portions of the disc of the galaxy travelling inwards This colossal wave of material decelerated rapidly moving from the outer to the inner edge of the eyelids and crashed midway through the galaxy’s disc, producing dazzling ribbons of intense star formation and compressed ridges of gas and dust that resemble a pair of cosmic “eyelids”.

Why is there a bridge between these two spiral galaxies? Made of gas and stars, the bridge provides strong evidence that these two immense star systems have passed close to each other and experienced violent tides induced by mutual gravity. Known together as Arp 240 but individually as NGC 5257 and NGC 5258, computer modelling and the ages of star clusters indicate that the two galaxies completed a first passage near each other only about 250 million years ago. Gravitational tides not only pulled away matter, they compress gas and so caused star formation in both galaxies and the unusual bridge. Galactic mergers are thought to be common, with Arp 240 representing a snapshot of a brief stage in this inevitable process. The Arp 240 pair are about 300 million light-years distant and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of Virgo. Repeated close passages should ultimately result in a merger and with the emergence of a single combined galaxy.

By showing off its stunning turquoise and rose quartz tones in this image, NGC 6818 lives up to…

Little Gem Nebula shows off its jewel tones

By showing off its stunning turquoise and rose quartz tones in this image, NGC 6818 lives up to its popular name: Little Gem Nebula.

This cloud of gas formed some 3500 years ago when a star like the Sun reached the end of its life and ejected its outer layers into space. As the layers of stellar material spread out from the nucleus – the white stellar remnant at the centre of the image – they ended up acquiring unusual shapes.

The central star has a faint stellar companion 150 astronomical units away, or five times the distance between the Sun and Neptune. You can just about make this out: if you zoom in to the centre, you’ll notice the white dot in the middle is not perfectly round, but rather two dots very close together.

Though smaller than their Unit Telescope neighbours, the Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile are still…

Moon dome

Though smaller than their Unit Telescope neighbours, the Auxiliary Telescopes at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile are still hefty displays of engineering. This one is closed up while the sky is still light but, come nightfall, the observing will begin.

Brown dwarfs are thought to be the missing link between planets and stars, with masses u…

NASA Space Telescopes Pinpoint Elusive Brown Dwarf

Brown dwarfs are thought to be the missing link between planets and stars, with masses up to 80 times that of Jupiter. But their centers are not hot or dense enough to generate energy through nuclear fusion the way stars do. Curiously, scientists have found that, for stars roughly the mass of our sun, less than 1 percent have a brown dwarf orbiting within 3 AU (1 AU is the distance between Earth and the sun). This phenomenon is called the "brown dwarf desert."

The newly discovered brown dwarf, which orbits a host star, may inhabit this desert. Spitzer and Swift observed the microlensing event after being tipped off by ground-based microlensing surveys, including the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE). The discovery of this brown dwarf, with the unwieldy name OGLE-2015-BLG-1319, marks the first time two space telescopes have collaborated to observe a microlensing event.

"We want to understand how brown dwarfs form around stars, and why there is a gap in where they are found relative to their host stars," said Yossi Shvartzvald, a NASA postdoctoral fellow based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and lead author of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal. "It's possible that the 'desert' is not as dry as we think."

Saturn's north polar region displays its beautiful bands and swirls, which somewhat resemble the brushwork in a watercolor painting.

Each latitudinal band represents air flowing at different speeds, and clouds at different heights, compared to neighboring bands. Where they meet and flow past each other, the bands' interactions produce many eddies and swirls.

The northern polar region of Saturn is dominated by the famous hexagon shape which itself circumscribes the northern polar vortex – seen as a dark spot at the planet’s pole in the above image – which is understood to the be eye of a hurricane-like storm.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 20 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 5, 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 728 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 890,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 53 miles (86 kilometers) per pixel.

Dunes and ripples most commonly form in topographic lows. But not in this…

A Piece of Mars: Bedforms on crater rims | Lori Fenton's Blog

Dunes and ripples most commonly form in topographic lows. But not in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.6×0.34 mi) scene. Here, and in other places on Mars, these bedforms (called TARs) form on plains, and sometimes appear to cling to the rims of craters – which are topographic highs, not lows. It’s not clear how this happens: Does the topography of the crater rim provide a wind shadow that allows windblown sediment to accumulate there? Or was there simply more loose material on the crater rims to begin with, allowing these things to form in place? I’m open to suggestions.

A nova in Sagittarius is bright enough to see with binoculars. Detected last month, the stellar explosion even approached the limit of naked-eye visibility last week. A classical nova results from a thermonuclear explosion on the surface of a white dwarf star -- a dense star having the size of our Earth but the mass of our Sun. In the featured image, the nova was captured last week above ancient Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai, Thailand. To see Nova Sagittarius 2016 yourself, just go out just after sunset and locate near the western horizon the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius), popularly identified with an iconic teapot. Also visible near the nova is the very bright planet Venus. Don’t delay, though, because not only is the nova fading, but that part of the sky is setting continually closer to sunset.

The landscape surrounding ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile is almost reminiscent of an alien world. The ti…

The road to Paranal

The landscape surrounding ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile is almost reminiscent of an alien world. The tiny silver shapes on the distant Cerro Paranal mountain are the VLT's Unit Telescopes (UTs) and smaller Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). This image is taken from the nearby mountain that is home to another of ESO's facilities, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA).

Breakthrough Listen has begun using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia t…

Australian Telescope Joins $100 Million Search for Alien Life

Breakthrough Listen has begun using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to scan the heavens, representatives of the ambitious, decade-long project announced Monday (Nov. 7).

The Parkes dish becomes the third telescope to be employed by Breakthrough Listen, joining the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the Automated Planet Finder at Lick Observatory in Northern California.

"The addition of Parkes is an important milestone," billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner, founder of the Breakthrough Initiatives, which include Breakthrough Listen, said in a statement. "These major instruments are the ears of planet Earth, and now they are listening for signs of other civilizations."

In the new film, Arrival, extraterrestrials once again pay Earth a visit. But many be…

Big Picture Science Radio Show: Aliens - The Evidence

In the new film, Arrival, extraterrestrials once again pay Earth a visit. But many believe the aliens are already here. How good is the evidence? And what is the chance that experiments to eavesdrop on distant alien societies might succeed. Also, could aliens be behind the bizarre behavior of two star systems now making the news?

If scientists ever succeed in making contact with extraterrestrial beings, who gets to steer the conversation? Indeed, how do we even have a conversation? Despite what Gene Roddenberry told you, any real aliens’ command of English will be meager.

A major new sci-fi film, Arrival, deals with these and other frequently ignored matters. Its unconventional style is both understated and cerebral. This is not a shoot-‘em-up alien flick; rather, the makers have emphasized empathy and character development, an approach that may disappoint middle school boys, but is refreshing for the rest of us.

Drake came up with a simple equation, a string of seven factors that, when…

Happy birthday to the Drake Equation, which is now 55 years old!

Drake came up with a simple equation, a string of seven factors that, when multiplied together, provide an estimate of the number of galactic, transmitting societies. If this number was very small, then SETI made no sense. If it was large, then there was a chance of hearing something. This equation solved his agenda problem.

No “official” estimates for the terms of Drake’s equation were produced by the conference, although Drake himself has suggested that the number of galactic societies that are on the air might be ten thousand. But despite the fact that his formulation is hard to evaluate (we still don’t know the values of many terms), it has become a widely accepted tool for considering the question of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Indeed, 55 years after Frank Drake first wrote this equation on a chalkboard, it has arguably attained the status of the second most famous formula in science (after Einstein’s E=mc2), and can be found in every astronomy textbook. It is also a guide for the research programs of the SETI Institute, each of which can be tied to a term in the equation.

Because Mimas (near lower left) appears tiny by comparison, it might seem that the rings would be far more massive, but this is not the case. Scientists think the rings are no more than a few times as massive as Mimas, or perhaps just a fraction of Mimas' mass. Cassini is expected to determine the mass of Saturn's rings to within just a few hundredths of Mimas' mass as the mission winds down by tracking radio signals from the spacecraft as it flies close to the rings.

The rings, which are made of small, icy particles spread over a vast area, are extremely thin – generally no thicker than the height of a house. Thus, despite their giant proportions, the rings contain a surprisingly small amount of material.

Fraser Cain of Universe Today asks in this video: What If We Do Find Aliens?

We've been so busy wondering how we'll find aliens tha…

Fraser Cain of Universe Today asks in this video: What If We Do Find Aliens?

We've been so busy wondering how we'll find aliens that we never stopped to consider what we'll do if we actually encounter them. How does an alien discovery get communicated to the media? Who's responsible to craft a response?

A thrilling ride is about to begin for NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Engine…

NASA Saturn Mission Prepares for 'Ring-Grazing Orbits'

A thrilling ride is about to begin for NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Engineers have been pumping up the spacecraft's orbit around Saturn this year to increase its tilt with respect to the planet's equator and rings. And on Nov. 30, following a gravitational nudge from Saturn's moon Titan, Cassini will enter the first phase of the mission's dramatic endgame.

Launched in 1997, Cassini has been touring the Saturn system since arriving there in 2004 for an up-close study of the planet, its rings and moons. During its journey, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean within Enceladus and liquid methane seas on Titan.

Between Nov. 30 and April 22, Cassini will circle high over and under the poles of Saturn, diving every seven days -- a total of 20 times -- through the unexplored region at the outer edge of the main rings.

"We're calling this phase of the mission Cassini's Ring-Grazing Orbits, because we'll be skimming past the outer edge of the rings," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "In addition, we have two instruments that can sample particles and gases as we cross the ringplane, so in a sense Cassini is also 'grazing' on the rings."

Rock Core from Dinosaur-Killing Impact Reveals How Enormous Craters Form

The drill core penetrated a circle of mountains, known as a peak r…

Rock Core from Dinosaur-Killing Impact Reveals How Enormous Craters Form

The drill core penetrated a circle of mountains, known as a peak ring, in Mexico’s buried Chicxulub crater. Only the largest impacts are powerful enough to form peak rings. Understanding how these mountains formed at the 200-kilometre-wide Chicxulub could help to reveal how cosmic collisions shaped other bodies, such as the Moon and Venus.

The work also shows how, despite killing the dinosaurs, the impact may have created an environment where other life could thrive. The cosmic smash-up fractured rocks, opening up spaces and warm habitats for microbes to move in.

“We got a core better than we could reasonably have imagined,” says David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. “It is absolutely extraordinary.” He and his colleagues describe the findings on November18 in Science.

Seth Shostak, SETI Institute Senior Astronomer and StarTalk veteran, discovers what it’s like to host StarTalk All-Stars when he welcomes noted skeptic Ben Radford and new comic co-host Ray Ellin to discuss unidentified flying objects, government cover-ups, anal probes, and space-faring dinosaurs. Discover the true story of the Roswell incident, including how a series of public relations mistakes by uninformed local military and government personnel turned a top-secret program to monitor nuclear tests by the Soviet Union, code-named Project Mogul, into the greatest conspiracy theory of our time. In response to fan-submitted cosmic queries chosen by Ray, Seth and Ben discuss, debunk and dismiss everything from crop circles, Area 51 and the infamous “alien autopsy” to the supposedly secret, subterranean joint human/alien government base harboring Bigfoot, the chupacabra, and multiple species of aliens below Dulce, New Mexico. Find out what the protocols are for an actual alien encounter, and how the real world and the media make them practically meaningless. You’ll also hear what questions Seth would ask an alien, and how he thinks we might be able to communicate with them should they show up. Finally, explore some of the psychology behind the third of the U.S. public who believe UFOs are really alien visitors, the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, the role of the “Men in Black,” and the apparent alien fascination with cow anuses.

The prospect of aliens visiting Earth has been percolating through human …

Unexpected 'Arrival': Humanity's Not Ready for Aliens

The prospect of aliens visiting Earth has been percolating through human thought for decades, thanks to countless sci-fi books and movies, such as the newly released film "Arrival." But it's still not clear how we would deal with the real thing.

Astronomers have drawn up a series of recommended actions to be taken after the detection of a signal from a faraway alien civilization, but it seems that no such effort has been made with regard to E.T.'s arrival here, said veteran alien hunter Seth Shostak.

"I don't know of any protocol if they land," said Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California.

"I've never heard of any such thing, and I'd be surprised if there was one," Shostak said. "But who knows what's in the bowels of the Pentagon?"

When it comes to the study of exoplanets, it’s common knowledge that the host stars don’t get much …

The Stellar Side of The Exoplanet Story

When it comes to the study of exoplanets, it’s common knowledge that the host stars don’t get much respect.

Yes, everyone knows that there wouldn’t be exoplanets without stars, and that they serve as the essential background for exoplanet transit observations and as the wobbling object that allows for radial velocity measurements that lead to new exoplanets discoveries.

But stars in general have been seen and studied for ever, while the first exoplanet was identified only 20-plus years ago. So it’s inevitable that host stars have generally take a back seat to the compelling newly-found exoplanets that orbit them.

As the field of exoplanet studies moves forward, however, and tries to answer questions about the characteristics of the planets and their odds of being habitable, the perceived importance of the host stars is on the rise.

Bright material (either dust or sand) has accumulated in the lee of wago…

A Piece of Mars: Shadows behind boulders | Lori Fenton's Blog

Bright material (either dust or sand) has accumulated in the lee of wagon- to car-sized boulders in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.6×0.34 mi) scene. It’s perhaps something like the Rocknest sand shadow that Curiosity visited a few years back. The wind blows from lower right to upper left, carrying along sediment that occasionally gets trapped in the protected areas behind the boulders. These sand shadows aren’t very thick, as the underlying texture (polygonal terrain!) is visible through them.

History is replete with attempts to control the weather, but we’d settle for an accurate, seve…

Big Picture Science Radio Show: Weather Vain

History is replete with attempts to control the weather, but we’d settle for an accurate, seven-day forecast. Find out how sophisticated technology might help us better predict severe storms. Plus the age when “weather forecast” was a laughable idea, weird clouds in the Bermuda Triangle, and a climate scientist who considers the future of geoengineering.

Surface features are visible on Saturn's moon Prometheus in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. M…

Faint F Ring and Prometheus

Surface features are visible on Saturn's moon Prometheus in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Most of Cassini's images of Prometheus are too distant to resolve individual craters, making views like this a rare treat.

Saturn's narrow F ring, which makes a diagonal line beginning at top center, appears bright and bold in some Cassini views, but not here. Since the sun is nearly behind Cassini in this image, most of the light hitting the F ring is being scattered away from the camera, making it appear dim. Light-scattering behavior like this is typical of rings comprised of small particles, such as the F ring.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 14 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 24, 2016.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 226,000 miles (364,000 kilometers) from Prometheus and at a sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 51 degrees. Image scale is 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) per pixel.

The SETI Institute in partnership with the Boldly Go Institute, is a proud partner of “Project Blue” who’s aim is to launch a space telescope to take …

The SETI Institute in partnership with the Boldly Go Institute, is a proud partner of “Project Blue” who’s aim is to launch a space telescope to take mankind’s first photograph of an Earth-like Exoplanet around our nearest neighbor star – Alpha Centauri. This project will also give access to citizen scientists, to a space-born telescope to explore other wonders of our universe during half of the telescope’s orbit, when it’s mirror and sensors cannot be pointed at Alpha Centauri.

The dunes climbing over a rocky surface in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.6×0.34 mi) scene are mo…

A Piece of Mars: Grainfall | Lori Fenton's Blog

The dunes climbing over a rocky surface in this 0.96×0.54 km (0.6×0.34 mi) scene are mostly yellow because they’re covered (and therefore kept immobile) by dust. The crest of one dune, though, shows recent activity: dark sand has been pushed by the wind up the lower right side, and then shot (cannonball-style) over the brink, where it slowly piles up on the upper left side. This pileup is called grainfall, because that’s what the sand grains have done here (rather than sliding downhill, avalanche-style, which is called grainflow). There’s a dune on the left side of the image that hasn’t experienced this activity, maybe because it’s a little more sheltered from the wind.